Hi Readers, I have been using WordPress.com for a long time now. Unfortunately, the lack of flexibility in using this blog has finally got to me. I really love adding widgets, links, and other colorful stuff onto my blog. So, you’ll see a lot of interactive widgets on my blogger blog ‘Pause & Bookmark‘. I’m really miffed right now that I can’t do any of that fun stuff on this blog. You’ll see that, for the most part, this blog has been painfully sparse of color! Hence my overcompensation with the extravagantly girly header image…*eye rolling* …. I know… :P

Anyway, I am now moving my blog – this blog – to Blogger, because I LOVE the “Blogger in Draft” feature, and all the fun layouts. I searched for months for a good layout on WordPress that would reflect my personality, but all I got was weird stuff that just did not sit well with me.

Like this:

Mind you, I said, ‘Bread Pizza’ and not ‘Pizza Bread’. If I had said the latter, that would mean that I have the superior skill-set it takes to make pizza dough from scratch, that I would know what is yeast (including its properties, and why the heck exactly we need it in this recipe – I have no idea why), and that I have the upper arm strength to actually make pizza dough!

You know me too well, so I won’t elaborate on that!

Instead, what I did was, used my normal bread slices that I always have lying around at home, and turned it into something that would satisfy my perennial pizza craving. Yes, I do have a perennial craving for pizza. I think I was born with that technical fault! Something about the cheese and the sauce and all those carbs…

Anyway, if you suddenly have a craving for pizza, and want to fix a quick and painless dinner, make Bread Pizza.

– chopped canned-meat of your choice – chicken frankfurters, luncheon meat, or even cooked and shredded chicken – whatever you want your topping to be. As long as it’s not sweet – I don’t dig sweet pizza! Sorry, there are some things my palate won’t accept…

– oregano flakes

– soy sauce

– 1 tsp red-chilli powder, or 2-3 finely chopped green chillies

Here’s what you do:

Just make the topping and arrange on the bread, then microwave! Ba-ding! You’re done!

Okay. So making the topping takes a little longer…:P Sorry!

I just threw stuff together on the pan, and improvised as I went along. So, anything that caters to your taste/craving should do.

1. In a pan, pour in a tbsp of oil or melt some butter. When the oil heats up, drop in the diced peppers.

2. When the peppers are well sauteed, add the onion and a tbsp of ginger-garlic paste.

3. Sprinkle some salt and pepper on this, and saute well.

4. Now pour in the soy sauce. Then add the green chillies or red chilli powder if you need more heat. Note: if you have a palate that doesn’t take much heat, STOP with just adding black pepper powder.

5. Throw in the meat, and let it cook with all the veggies for a while. If you want to go vegetarian on this one, or if you didn’t have any meat on hand when your craving struck (you know who), skip this step.

6. Let the whole mixture simmer for a while, till all the water content in the veggies have released and reduced. Now you have yummy pizza-topping! Yaay!!

Note: You know, you could also arrange all the toppings raw on the slice, but what’s the fun in that?

8. Spread some pizza sauce on the bread slice. Go easy on the sauce, because it has a distinct tangy flavor that you might not like too much of. I got so excited that I slathered on the sauce for a couple of slices, and regretted it with every bite. One spoon sauce per slice will do.

9. Place some of the pizza-topping on the bread. Arrange greens olives or just leave it like it is.

10. Finally, for the glorious part of the entire thing – grate some Mozarella cheese onto each slice. You can over-do it or under-do it, but I’d think you were weird, if you didn’t want too much cheese on your pizza! Hence, my culinary contempt for a certain cheese-hater’s preferences…

11. Now, just stick it into the oven or the microwave for 3 minutes or till the cheese melts. Let it sit for a while after you remove it from the oven.

12. Eat. And thank me for this pizza short-cut. Or not. Don’t have to thank me if your mouth is too full with wonderful pizza! I’ll understand :)

Just want you to know that I failed, AGAIN, to take a picture of something I made! So, your pizza could look like this…

image not mine

Or this…

image not mine

…based on how colorful your pizza-topping is. Mine was pretty amazing – emphasis on ‘pretty’. Unfortunately, you know what transpired. I ate, and forgot everything else…sigh. This is getting to be a problem.

Note: These pictures are not mine.

Anyway, enjoy, until I come bug you with another recipe, complete with MY OWN pictures of the food! :D

Like this:

I have had many ‘Duh’ moments! In fact, 80% of my life is all about the ‘duh’ moments. You know, like stuff that everybody just KNOWS when they are put into a certain situation, but for which, I need a user’s manual, complete with detailed, labeled diagrams! Yeah, sometimes I make myself tired…

Anyway, cooking, by and large, has been that way for me, which you already know if you have closely followed this blog. I can’t cook. That should probably be my epitaph, or something. So, I used to think that making pizza, pancake, and brownies were like high-end magic, or at least stuff that I would never be able to do, without changing life as it was for myself!! HAHA! I have no idea what I just said! Oh yeah, what I said was that I thought pancakes and brownies were hard to make.

But then, (I love how you can break all rules of grammar on your personal blog!) I decided last week, that I am going to figure out the pancake and the pizza. One was, and the other wasn’t really…

So, here’s how I made pancake – those who make scrumptious pancakes on a daily basis and WOW your family every day, and are adventurous with their pancakes to turn them into 5-star restaurant cuisines, please…PLEASE ignore this post. Others, like me, who have no idea how a pancake is made, have never eaten one, or think that it is ‘Un-do-able’ follow me. It’s really elementary, my dear Watson!

3. Pour in the milk and stir well, so that no lumps are formed. Remember, lumps are no good for any one, anywhere.

At this point, let me just say, that if you have ever made wheat dhosas for dinner on those totally uninspired evenings, you know that making a pancake is not very different. It’s the ingredients that are the fun part!

4. Anyway, make sure that your batter is not too watery (or milky!), and not too thick either. You know… your 1&1/2 cup of milk should be enough to make an easy-to-pour batter.

5. Heat up a flat pan (non-stick pan or your dhosa pan should do), and, if you don’t care about your diet, go ahead and dab some butter on the heated pan. If you do care about your diet, skip the butter. Nothing inedible will happen!

6. Take a large ladle-full of batter, and simply pour in the center of the pan. NOTE: Please, please DO NOT spread it around with your ladle!! If you, like me, have made one too many godhumai dhosas (wheat dhosas) and rice dhosas in your life, you will have the tendency to spread batter around on the pan. DON’T DO IT! Hold your hand back, and grit your teeth if necessary.

You see, pancake is wonderful like that. No effort at all, no stress to make perfect round-shaped things. Just pour and let it be.

7. You will see that the batter itself has the tendency to spread a wee-bit. After that it will stop spreading and start to fluff up nicely. YUM!

8. Wait till all the bubbles on the batter burst (now it’s back to the dhosa process again!). Flip it over on the pan, if you have crazy Julia-Child-skills! If not, just take a flat ladle and turn it over.

9. Let it brown up a bit on the other side too. You shouldn’t let any dark-spot, burn-marks, or scars form on the pancake. Treat it like a gentle flower…

10. Flip it back up onto a plate…and go make some more. Or…leave some one else to make their own breakfast (I only wish…) and pour some honey over your pancakes and stuff your pretty/handsome face with them!!! Usually, people use maple syrup. I have no idea what it is. So, I used honey, and I was anything but regretful…meaning, that I could not wipe the smile off my face…

Pancake, where were you all my life? Sigh!

pancake & image not mine! :P

PS: If y0u are wondering what’s all this ‘pancake & image not mine!’ about, I just wanted to let you now, that I did NOT photograph even one part of the pancake-making process. Even though I seriously considered it for all of 2 seconds, I did not even stop to photograph the finished product. It was all already in my mouth! I made it twice last week, and still failed to get a picture. So, I used an image I found on the web. Just googled ‘basic pancake’ and got these images. These images are not mine. But, for the record, I would like to sincerely state that I did make pancakes and they did taste heavenly. And mine looked exactly like those in the pictures. So, There!

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“One writes out of one thing only–one’s own experience. Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from the experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give.”